Through the Jet Stream
by I.C. Weener
Summary: Downgrading the upgrades.


"Hey, 'Dee. Looks like they're about to break your toy."

Tweedledum watched the battle at his sister's side with vague concern. The twin ES agents were standing a safe distance away from the action with a GOTT security squad behind them. The guards were huddled over a suitcase loaded with a portable console.

"Don't think so highly of these disgusting traitors, Tweedledum," Tweedledee yawned gently with a silk-covered hand over her mouth. "Janus will break them first."

Éclair was fighting an eight-foot-tall mobile drone that almost seemed like it was designed specifically to overcome her strongest ES powers. Janus was built like a sumo wrestler, moved like a tank, and carried two large reactor towers on his shoulders. When Eclair tried land a kick on his armored torso, Janus revved back on his treads and swiped one of his titanium manipulators at her. When she tried to punch, he caught her glowing fist in mid-swing and twisted her into an arm lock.

Lumiere was crouched on a connection terminal on Janus's back. She used her own ES powers to hack into the robot's AI center in an attempt to defeat him electronically. His counter-intrusion programming was foiling all of her technical skills in the same way his physical power was slowly overwhelming Éclair.

The robot's internal circuits determined it was time to commence the uninstallation proceedings.

Éclair gasped when the drone's upper fuselage snapped open like a pair of massive hydraulic jaws. She was pulled a foot off the ground and was hoisted into the machine's cranking mouth by her arms. Her legs flailed grotesquely and her voice abruptly stopped mid-scream as Janus rapidly snapped his hydraulics open and shut. He did to the top half of Éclair's body as a trash compactor does to an old car.

At the same time Éclair was getting her filling squeezed out, Janus sent a high voltage current through the terminal on his back to deal with the other nuisance. Lumiere screamed in agony as every nanomachine in her body fried and her neurons lit up like supernovas. She fell off of the robot's metal shell and crashed on the floor on her back, still feeling the punishment of a thousand watts jolting through her lithe body.

Janus hummed lightly as he powered down his attack mode. Éclair's legs still dangled out of his armor hatch, while her top half rested pulverized somewhere in the darkness behind his metal jowls. Her feet twitched in nervous impulse, and Janus snapped his mouth a final time to crush the last of the life out of her. On the floor behind, Lumiere's chest moved slightly in a weak attempt to breathe. Janus sent an extra current of electricity through her and rattled her body until it went completely silent.

Éclair dangled limply off the ground with her waist bent over and her metallic red skirt tracing the contours of her hind end. Lumiere lay on the floor smoking faintly.

"You think they're ready for the Dee Command?" Tweedledum asked his sister with a tinge of sarcasm.

"I'll say," Tweedledee replied, her eyes twinkling with greed and a diabolical smirk crossing her lips. She turned toward the other GOTT personnel behind her and gave them the order.

"Initiate E-Intercept."

The guards working the portable monitor flipped a switch that showed Janus's design schematics on a small screen. This revealed the two "reactors" he was equipped with were actually heavily armored transport cells with a female outline nestled comfortably in each one.

The screen also showed the digitized brainwaves of Éclair and Lumiere broadcasting out of their remains and beginning the search for their next bodies. Under normal circumstances, their consciousness would transmit to the vaults of back-up vessels stored in cryogenic slumber underneath the GOTT compound the moment they were KIA. This time, however, Tweedledee had been careful enough to program her robotic sentry with a firewall that kept Éclair's and Lumiere's brainwaves trapped in the same room where they had ceased being. The plan was simply to coerce the two rebels out of their current bodies so their brainwaves could automatically stream into the two back-up bodies Tweedledee had prepared for them. The first step was to render their present forms uninhabitable.

The vessels she had picked out were always intended to become Lumiere and Éclair at some future point, just not in this ruthless and calculating way. Tweedledee and her brother had paid a visit to the two agents' personal menagerie to retrieve a compatible pair of bodies before she set her plan in motion. Tampering with other agents' personal possessions like this would normally be considered a gross offense of GOTT protocol and a complete breach of Éclair's and Lumiere's privacy, but since they had taken it upon themselves to renounce the organization and commit what amounted to a cyber terror attack directly against the headquarters, the two had been deemed items of non-person interest. The wardrobe of backup vessels they had been for culturing for themselves were now simply corporate assets to be used at GOTT's disposal.

The only thing Tweedledee needed to fix was the base programming in the new Éclair and Lumiere's empty cybernetic brains. Their subconscious had been tweaked so adherence to company policy and personal loyalty to the twins would always be their first priority. The transfer between one body to the next would make Éclair and Lumiere's personalities merge with whatever underlying traits Tweedledee had programmed into their minds. She was curious to see the results.

It had only taken a few hours for Tweedledee to patch the BIOS in what would become Éclair's and Lumiere's next vessels. It wouldn't be long until all of their backups were put through the same revisions.

"How are we looking?" Tweedledee asked the guard behind her a minute after the E-Intercept began.

"We got the little one. Janus isolated most of her stream while he was zapping her," the guard answered.

"What about Heels?" Tweedledee asked.

"Still trying to catch her signal. She's being stubborn," the guard said. Then he soon added, "Wait. Now she's loading up, too."

Lumiere's container whisked open first. She hopped down from Janus's shoulder with a tiny grunt and looked around. This new form of her had long teal hair and came out of her package fashionably dressed in a short blue gown with a white string tied around her waist. Her emerald eyes glanced toward the ground and she started walking toward her sizzling former self.

Éclair climbed out of her container next. She had exchanged her long brunette looks for a short violet bob cut with a small braid above her left ear. She was wearing a red and white outfit that conformed to her shape even more closely than her previous attire. She may have upped her bust game between incarnations, or maybe it was a trick of the shadows under Janus's spotlights.

Lumiere straddled her lifeless remains and lifted the Derringer out of her old thigh holster. She rested her twinkling palm on her former self's forehead to scan the level of brain damage she had endured in her previous existence.

Éclair walked in front of the battle drone's hatch to check out what was left of her old junk. One of her hands looted the Walther dangling from the belt on her corpse. Her other hand touched the back of her old skirt and gently brushed down her previous self's rear curves.

" _Crunchy,"_ Éclair purred.

" _Crispy,"_ Lumiere whispered.

Once they had collected their belongings, Lumiere and Eclair silently walked toward the GOTT personnel and stood side by side in front of Tweedledee.

"Sorry about treating you so badly, but you should have known turning against us was never going to end well," Tweedledee said as she offered them a smile. "Did you get all of your digits back in order, ladies?"

Éclair nodded. Lumiere giggled mischievously.


End file.
